Understanding Comics for Dummies

 

I know the narrator guy isn't supposed to be Harry Potter, but he looks an aweful lot like him! He's supposed to be wearing a Flash t-shirt, but it also looks like a lightening bolt. Made it a lot more fun for me to pretend that Harry was teaching me about comics :)

Page 13 - Seeing Faces
Makes a good point about if you draw a bunch of closed curves in any shape or form, we can automatically turn it into a face by adding an eye (looks like a target). Bottom is the picture of a wall socket, and it looks like a face!

I never really thought much about this since it's something everyone does. We see faces in even the most ridiculous objects sometimes; we almost force ourselves to see a human-like face. I have a ton of photos on my phone that I've taken whenever I see one. Here are a couple examples:

 


I really liked Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. And that link of the parody images made me almost pee myself laughing! But back to McCloud; I have to say, I loved that he wrote basically a comics for dummies book as a comic book. It just makes since but isn't something I would have ever thought to do because it's so simple yet brilliant.


Page 54 - Panels
Panels are a general indicator that time/space is being divided, but the duration it's for depends on the content inside. Panels shapes themselves vary and usually don't have a specific meaning besides artistically.
Difference between what is depicted in the comics vs what the reader perceives

This point of the strip was very straight forward, but I still found it very interesting. Especially when he said that there really isn't a meaning to having different shaped panel and boxes as they're usually just to enhance the experience of the read.

Yet I didn't find that to be the case when I read Asteros Polyp. last semester. In that piece, the author uses the shapes of the panels and the text bubbles to help create more of the mood/attitude of the character(s) in the panel. Especially in the text bubbles so there isn't a need for many words. It's almost a wordless comic since he only uses text when absolutely necessary.